By: Jaqueline M. Hummel, Managing Director

March 7, 2015

This doesn’t happen often, but on March 2, SEC Commissioner Daniel M. Gallagher actually expressed some concern about the regulatory burdens placed on the financial services industry in a public statement. He was not shedding any tears for the industry, but he was concerned about the effects of excessive regulation, stating “regulatory burdens divert capital away from the real economy—this acts as a barrier to entry for new market participants and further entrenches those institutions that are increasingly ‘too big to fail.'” I was particularly impressed by his statement that:

No regulator, as far as I know, has considered the overall regulatory burden on financial services firms when determining whether to impose additional costly regulations. We as regulators are, when it comes to the possibility that our rules are causing death by a thousand cuts, the proverbial ostrich—head firmly entrenched in the sand.

But the diagram he and his staff created was by far the most impressive illustration of the panoply of regulations recently imposed on the financial services industry. The sheer number of rules should be cause for reflection on the part of regulators and lawmakers. Check out the diagram here.